


The Private Library of Daryl Dixon

by Nakimochiku



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-05
Updated: 2014-11-05
Packaged: 2018-02-24 04:54:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2568929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nakimochiku/pseuds/Nakimochiku
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"All books and resources provided by Glenn Rhee."</p>
<p>Or, Daryl loves reading, and Glenn loves Daryl.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Private Library of Daryl Dixon

You catch Daryl reading in little alcoves as though he wants to keep his literacy a secret. It’s always a different book, always a different place. You wonder if he gets bored of the books and starts new ones, or if he just finishes them that quickly.

He’s reading Watership Down in the oak tree, crossbow slung over his knees. Like a rabbit sneaking up on a fox, you know he knows you’re there; but since he ignores you, you’re content to watch him read. He holds the book at arm’s length, squinting, and it occurs to you he might need reading glasses; you make a note to pick up those cheap ones at the drug store. 

"Is it good?" You ask, since too much silence makes you fidgety. He shrugs, grunts, turns another page, smearing perpetually dirty fingers across the paper. Were he anyone else, maybe you’d chat his ear off. But he’s Daryl, and the way he leans his head back against the gnarled oak bark, breathes quietly, fingers fluttering distractedly over his cross bow almost lovingly, denotes a sort of peace you don’t want to disturb.

"Yer starin'." He growls. You blink; his ruddy sunburnt skin has grown ruddier, something like a blush rising on his neck. He glares at you, and his fingers are no longer fluttering. They are still, curled around the shaft as though you’re actually a threat.

Maybe you are; you certainly look at the curl of his fingers hungrily enough.

"Wondering if you’d read me a bit."

Daryl blinks suspiciously at you, snorts, and turns back to his book, dismissing you.  You probably have chores to do, requests to take for your next run. You sit right there, a little ways from Daryl, while his eyes devour the paper.

"What’s it about?" You ask when he’s read another few pages. He’s not very far in, but reading time is a luxury no one can truly indulge in, not when there’s always something more pressing to do.

He’s silent so long, you almost think he isn’t going to answer. "Rabbits." He grunts, and turns another page, creasing the cover back over the spine. 

"Huh?"

"S'about rabbits lookin' fer a safe place." 

"A bit like us."

Daryl snorts, casts you a look. He doesn’t meet your eyes, he studies you instead; your cap folded in your fists, your water bottle resting in the grass by your feet, your bat nestled in the crook of your arm. You think Daryl can read more in those little, often overlooked details than a book. Or perhaps you are a book to him. Having observed you, as a predator takes note of prey, he nods, goes back to his book. "Bit like us." He agrees.

Then it’s like you don’t exist to him. He shuts you out so totally, you feel the clear dismissal without a single word uttered on Daryl’s part. You collect your things, slinging your cap back onto your head, and leave him with just a backward glance. You think he’s met his quota for human interaction and, like the introvert he is, needs to revert back into his shell.

You keep the image of him, thumb at his mouth, book held at arm’s length, one ankle across his knee jiggling his cross bow, in mind.

*

You bring Daryl a collection of cheap reading glasses and a copy of White Fang from your next run. You read it once in high school, and privately, you laugh and think the book is a perfect metaphor for Daryl.

"I didn’t know which would be closest to your prescription, so I just brought ‘em all." you say, dropping the glasses and book at his feet among the thin wood shavings of his handmade crossbow bolts.

"Couldn’t find none with better colours?" He examines a pair with animal print, tries them on. His neck flushes when you pinch your lips together and try not to laugh.

"Hey, beggars can’t be choosers." You remind.

He moves on to the book, examines the cover. "Read this 'fore." He says.

"Oh. Okay." You hold your hand out for it. His eyes flick to your hand, and he bites his lip, settling it in his lap.

"I’ll read it again. Beggars can’t be choosers." You wonder if he keeps it to avoid hurting your feelings; if somehow he thought you’d be offended that he didn’t appreciate your gift. Really, you could have picked up any of the books in that rat chewed box. You picked the one you thought he’d like the most.

"You gonna read to me this time?" a smile twists your mouth, and he snorts, sets the book down with the glasses and the shavings, easing his knife down the length of the rough bolt with an almost delicate grace. "That doesn’t sound like a no."

"Haven' read t' nobody in a long time." He says lowly, focussed on his task. You wonder who he used to read to. You wonder at a million things. "Wouldn' be no good anymore."

"Okay then..." You say, trailing awkward and unsure. Daryl almost always leaves you feeling this way, and with no other reason to stay by his side, you move away, glancing over your shoulder as you do. He watches you go for just a second, before going back to his bolt. You want him to call you back. And say what? You don’t know.

*

Daryl is reading Jane Eyre, purple reading glasses perched on the end of his nose. He’s almost finished it, and you watch, gaze flicking constantly between the road beyond the wheel and him, he mouths the words as he reads them. He catches you looking, and bites at his thumb instead.

"Sometimes I think we should just start you a little library. How ‘bout it? The private library of Daryl Dixon, funded by the Glenn Rhee society."

"Fancy words." Daryl grunts, but there's a rare twist at his lips. You’re quiet a moment, glancing over at him. But he hasn’t gone back to Jane Eyre, instead staring almost absently at the torn skin around his thumbs, scraping his nail across it. 

"What kinda books would you want?" You want to know. You want to understand him in whatever way you can. You want to keep him; Jane Eyre open on his lap, purple reading glasses sliding down his nose, tortured skin of his thumb bleeding, alive in your mind just like this. He shrugs. "C’mon, if I ever raid a library, I gotta know what to bring back for you."

He shrugs again. "Everythin' I guess." He’s quiet a beat, scratches his chin and you expect him to leave it at that, but perhaps Jane Eyre has put him in a good mood. Perhaps you put him in a good mood. The thought delights you. "Me and Merle, we read anythin' we could get our hands on, didn' matter what. Merle was always on me to read, couldn' have no brother of his actin' the redneck high school drop out."

You wisely say nothing to that. You can’t imagine Merle Dixon reading. Andrea said the same thing about Daryl once and got one hell of a tongue lashing for it. That was before Daryl started to hide with his books, as though afraid Andrea would tease him about it again. "That’s cool of him." You say, and hell, that’s something you never expected to say about Merle Dixon either.

"We'd go t'second hand places, pick up a couple used books real cheap. When we finished we switched. Merle always finished before me. He'd hound me till I was done, so I threatened to spoil the endin' fer him."

Those all sound like things brothers do; teasing and annoying each other, and you can see it, really, Daryl and Merle, quiet in each other’s company, until one finds something amusing enough in his book to read out loud. That’s a good friendly image, you’re glad Daryl shared it with you. You don’t want to spoil this good mood he’s in, not when you get to see his reserved little smiles.

"What’s your favourite part of Jane Eyre?" You ask, expertly swerving out of the way of a geek.

"When she confesses t' him in the garden."  You blink in surprise at his prompt answer.

"Will you read it to me?"

He blushes, shrugs a little. "Okay but it won' sound like no brit." He picks up his book, flips some pages back, and curls the cover over. "D'ya think i can stay an' become nothin' to you? D'ya think i'm an automaton, a machine without feelin' an'--"

You lean back, ease your foot off the pedal and listen. Daryl's voice pitches upward with emotion. It’s good. You wish Jane Eyre’s confession was his own. But there's no good in wishing that.

*

The house smells stale. The wooden door splinters beneath Daryl's foot, and you follow close behind him, bat up at the ready. You think it'd make more sense if you went first, keeping the long range weapons towards the back, like in your video games. You've tried to suggest this to Daryl before, but he'd be damned if he put anyone in danger before himself.

There's nothing in the house though, just rats and cobwebs. You begin ransacking the kitchen for anything of use, testing the sharpness of knives, pocketing a little book of matches. Daryl has gravitated towards the book case, dirty fingers running along cracked spines. They're just old harlequin issues, _the sheikh’s pregnant wife_ and _the billionaire’s betrayal_ , those kinds of things. You think Daryl looks like he's found illuminated manuscripts, the way he's looking at them.

"Find anything good?" You ask. You squint at a title. " _His forbidden lover_ really drawing you in?" He snorts at you, pulls out one of the books.

"Nah, these are all trash, but my ma loved ‘em." He doesn't say anything more, leaving the book on the shelf after flipping through a few pages. If you pick up a few and stuff them in your back pack, you will make excuses like maybe Carol or Beth will appreciate them, if he asks. He's not looking at you, tearing through pantries and cupboards.

Later, you will drop the harlequin novels at his feet like all your other offerings. You will not ask to hear about his mother. But he will tell you about her collection on her nightstand, about how she'd send him to buy used ones from the ten cent bin. She had doubles of almost every title. It was one of these novels, laying on her bed near her cigarette hand, that set her alight.

Later you will see him read these novels in an hour or less, scoffing at the plotlines and cliches. He will turn to you on drives home and ask "can ya believe this shit?"

You don’t know it, stuffing the trash romance novels in beside canned pineapples and pumpkin pie filling and a half full bag of flour, but you look forward to this.

*

You leave him a collection of Victorian poetry, by his side and out of the rain, but you don’t try to make conversation. It’s a peace offering, and those given to Daryl are best given silently. You fucked up, and he sulked around for days, keeping out of sight, but never out of mind.

That’s probably why you fucked up to begin with.

He grasps your sleeve before you can turn to go, and when you turn to look at him in surprise, he doesn’t meet your eyes.

"Ya don' gotta…" He says. You don’t know if he means you don’t have to leave, or you don’t have to apologize, so you wait. He chews the inside of his lip, flicks his narrow eyes up at you, takes a sharp little breath. He lets go of your sleeve. You wonder if he’s seen in that little glance all the things you pretend not to feel for him. "You don’t gotta keep bringin' me books."

You blink. That’s not what you expected him to say. "Do you not--" you try again, try a different tact. "Why not?"

"Ya don’t need t’ trouble yerself none, bringin' me things to read." Despite his turned up collar, you can see his ruddy, blushing neck. You want to press kisses there. Daryl isn’t looking at you, and you’re glad.

"Hey." You say, and wait till his eyes find yours. "I want to." He blinks, studies you. He sees rain drops caught in your hair, dampening your shoulders. He sees the earnest way you hold your hands. "I do it cause I want to."  You wait a moment, grin. "But you can read to me and we'll call it even."

He shrugs, grabs the book up, makes room for you beside him. You sit as close as you dare, his side and thigh warm against yours. He flips through the table of contents, smears one dirty finger down the almost pristine page as he picks a poem, mouthing the titles.

"Don’t take all day about it." You tease, bumping your shoulder into his. He snorts at you, and if anything seems to read slower, until at last he flips to a page and begins to read. You want to rest your head against his shoulder, listen to his southern drawl, slow and easy around his words, all half formed consonants and wide vowels. 

"Low sit I down a' my lady's feet, gazin' through her wild eyes."

You want to kiss him, you want to show him all about holding hands and quickening pulses. You settle for his warmth down the length of your body, his voice close to your ear.

When he’s finished, he looks at you expectantly, closing the book over his finger. "Thanks." He says gruffly when you just stare at him blankly. "Fer th' books an'..." 

"Anytime." You brush off lightly and grin. "Just the Glenn Rhee society supporting the private library of Daryl Dixon."  Just you, loving the way his voice sounds, the way he looks at you, the way his lips move. Just you doing your best to keep him just like this, in the rain, pristine copy of Victorian poetry marked all over with his finger prints, making you think you'd write him all the books he could ever read if he just smiled and looked down at your hands, just like he's doing now.

"Stay." He says when you stand after he says nothing. He flushes up his neck when you look at him. "I can read t'ya a bit more."

"I'd like that." You say. You mean "I love you."

**Author's Note:**

> All books mentioned are relevant to my literary life rn. Also, the poem Daryl reads is the lust of the eyes by Elizabeth Siddal.


End file.
